


Tears on Pillows

by panther



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-30
Updated: 2012-05-30
Packaged: 2017-11-06 08:34:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/416855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panther/pseuds/panther
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cho and Harry are not the same people they were at Hogwarts but they find they understand each other because they want to live in the present and not talk about the past. Others don't understand how Harry can go back to Cho but then they don't seem to understand much about him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tears on Pillows

At fifteen, Harry was a mess and Cho was not much better. Neither of them would deny that later, in fact they both outright admitted it and that is where it started. It is all about a cold butter beer on a warm day with a sorry and how are you. Both have lost so much in the war, experienced the betrayal of friends that were not what they seemed, and somehow they connect over it. Marietta had made Cho think and Ron had just made Harry open his eyes. Classmates had tried to kill them and teachers butchered while battling by their sides and they remember it all enough without words and mental images. 

She asks him to lunch the week after and he invites her to his flat the weekend after that, sick of people gawking at him while he just tries to talk and connect with someone. They don’t talk about the war because everyone around them talks of nothing else. It is different and strange and they wouldn’t change a thing about it because eventually things stop being awkward and they enjoy themselves. It stops being about just having an honest conversation about something without people expecting a meltdown and becomes something more. Cedric was a long time ago and the war has been over for years, even if the pain will never go away altogether. 

Even though she wants to put it behind her, sometimes Cho still cries. Tears on her pillow, he holds her close and presses his nose to the back of her neck, breathing in deeply and offering what comfort he can. It isn’t much, but at least he doesn’t offer empty words and empty gestures. He merely offers himself and she takes it. Hermione has everything to say on the matter of her relationship and Harry doesn’t listen to any of it because he is _happy_ and anything else doesn’t matter. Ginny scowls and does her best to make Cho feel uncomfortable because she can’t understand, even years later, why her and Harry just didn’t fit and how the fairytale she wanted to create for them just suffocated him. Molly judges, Harry ignores, and Cho isn’t sure where she fits into it all other than at Harry’s side. 

They see the child she used to be and not the woman that life has forced her to become. Harry tells her not to worry about it but Cho knows they matter to him as much as her own family does to her. It would kill her not to have their support so she makes an effort and takes part in the Quidditch pick-up games at the Burrow, not talking about how George refuses to play beater anymore and how flying just doesn’t offer the same freedoms it used to for any of them. Harry and Cho can talk for hours, about Quidditch, themselves, work, hobbies and everything they should have talked about at fifteen and no one seems to get that. No one gets _them_.

“We’re not the same people that we were back then,” Harry murmurs into her shoulder one night, his fingers pressing into her hip as he pulls her a little closer.

“No one is,” she responds quietly, “No one could be, even if they didn’t face the things we did.”

“Then why do they act like we are?”

“Because it is easier than accepting change,” Cho replies bluntly. 

Cho knows, and accepts, that Harry is broken and bitter under the surface. She doesn’t expect perfect because Harry can’t do that but then neither can she. Cedric will always be part of their relationship but so will Sirius, Tonks, Remus and all the others that Harry feels he should have been able to save. Cho gets promoted, Harry doesn’t, and they move in together while everyone else questions why Chambers got the job and he didn’t. Harry doesn’t bother telling them that he didn’t apply because he is _happy_ just being an auror and handing out justice without all the paperwork that would come with a step up. Cho earns more but Harry has savings and when Harry proposes Molly says it isn’t right but Hermione has to concede that Molly’s opinion is old-fashioned and congratulates them. 

Their wedding is small, tiny even, with many of their colleagues not being invited and not all of their friends. They don’t leave enough time for people to get hyped up and to push their ideas of what their day should be on them. It isn’t about making a fuss, but about joining them in matrimony. Harry pretends not to see the look in Ginny’s eyes and Cho tells herself she is actually being accepted by Moly’s strong hug. Mostly, it is about the quiet meal the next night with Cho’s parents and the visit to the Potter’s grave that mean the most to them. 

Quietly building their lives together, they slowly take apart the expectations that others have of them. Cho is Mrs Potter but that is not a fact she flaunts to those she works with, and the Daily Prophet eventually give up on their hopes of finding a sensationalist story. Cho gives birth to Harry’s son and for three days he doesn’t have a name because they want it to be perfect and _his_. Ron becomes godfather but the title of godmother goes to Cho’s cousin and then they realise how really, people still don’t get it. Hermione is hurt but pretends to understand and Harry thinks maybe they just don’t want to understand him at all because family is the most important thing in his life. It feels a little too much like someone else’s competition. Cho says maybe they should move to a place people don’t stalk them for pictures of their son and where Hermione won’t find it so easy to try and tell Cho how to mother her child. They think Cho is stupid and yet she is anything but. Her tears come for different reasons now because she has _tried_ and still they don’t accept her. 

Harry hopes things will change but then Molly is offering advice that is a little too cutting and when Ginny sees Max she just looks jealous, like it should be her son, her life. Ron is still jealous of his happiness and his riches, of the way they don’t have any financial pressures despite Harry’s basic wage. Cho’s mother constantly talks about how it will be good for their child to grow up in peace and it only reminds Harry of the darkness and Cho of how _they_ had grown up in peace and look how that had ended up. Everyone talks of the past and the future and they just want to live in the _now_.

“We should go,” Cho whispers, hand on Harry’s chest, chin resting on arm, “Start a new life somewhere and get away from all of this. It keeps following us.”

“Maybe we should have done that in the first place,” Harry returns, “I wanted things...I wanted.”

“I know. Merlin Harry, I know.”

They leave before Cho discovers she is pregnant with another baby and in New Zealand no one has heard of Voldemort let alone Harry Potter. Sympathetic stares are no longer cast in their direction and months pass without a mention of the war. Harry takes Cho to the local village one afternoon, the first time that they leave their child with a new neighbour, and it seems like they are back to where they started. Cho is older now, over thirty, and time has put lines Harry hardly notices on her face but he still stutters a little when the light catches her hair and she laughs. Harry walks behind her, hands on her stomach, all awkward and stumbling as she laughs and people look on with soft smiles on their faces. Everything that used to hang over them remains but it is just easier to forget about it when people stop reminding them and they can just _live_.


End file.
